Last week, it was announced Dr. Zaremba will be leaving her Springhill practice in June. She’s the second doctor to leave the area in the last two months. Dr. Zaremba and Dr. Farangi came to the area as part of an announcement in January 2015 and now both are leaving.

The Nova Scotia Health Authority’s website only has one job posted for the area. On Friday, PC Leader Karla MacFarlane asked the Premier directly if his government would be recruiting two new doctors to replace the two that are left and he said, “No.”

Rushton says that’s not good enough.

“The Premier is not listening. We have a crisis on our hands here in Springhill,” says Rushton. “Doctors are leaving, which means people don’t have proper primary care but it also means we don’t have adequate staff for the emergency room.”

The emergency room in Springhill was closed most of last week during daytime hours and it is closed Wednesday and Thursday this week during daytime hours because there are not enough doctors. It is putting additional strain on the emergency room in Amherst that is not big enough to handle the capacity from the surrounding areas.

Rushton wants to see more doctors recruited to the area immediately and work to be done to find out why doctors are leaving and what can be done to keep them in the community.

“We need to get to the bottom of this doctor issue,” says Rushton. “People in Springhill deserve adequate frontline and emergency healthcare in our community.”